Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at the University of Iowa on January 26, 2016 in Iowa City, Iowa
Donald Trump intensified his feud with Fox News five days before Iowa kicks off the presidential nominations contest, saying he will hold a rogue event Thursday while Republican rivals take part in a nationally televised debate without him.
Real estate mogul Trump, the Republican frontrunner for the White House, is again dominating the airwaves and making his trailing rivals and the party squirm, all while his approval rating has never been higher.
The celebrity billionaire, 69, who has never held elected office, left the The celebrity billionaire, 69, who has never held elected office, left the Republican Party dumbfounded with his announcement that he will not participate in Thursday's debate in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by Fox News.
All eyes are on the heartland state, where the 12 Republican candidates and three Democratic hopefuls including Hillary Clinton are vying for bragging rights and the lead in the primary race heading to subsequent votes in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
As they grapple for air time, newspaper column inches or social media mentions, it is the populist Trump juggernaut that continues to hog the limelight.
He dropped a bombshell late Tuesday, saying he would skip the Fox News debate.
"Mr. Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one," his campaign team said, after Fox took the unprecedented step of mocking Trump for asking his nearly six million Twitter followers to weigh in on whether or not he should attend the debate.
Fox and its chief executive Roger Ailes "think they can toy with him, but Mr. Trump doesn't play games," the campaign said ominously.Fox shot back that it would not give in to "terrorizations," after it accused Trump's campaign manager of threatening Fox News host and debate moderator Megyn Kelly.
Twisting the knife, Trump said Wednesday he will hold a "special event" to benefit veterans groups at the same time as the debate, and in the same city.
- Trump streaks ahead -
The Republican National Committee appeared eager to distance itself from the Trump-Fox war.
"We'd love all the candidates in," RNC spokesman Sean Spicer told CNN.
But "at the end of the day, each campaign has to make up their own mind as to what's in their best interest, and so we respect that decision."
Trump has a genuine battle on his hands in Iowa with ultra-conservative Senator Ted Cruz, his nearest GOP rival, trailing by about five percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent Iowa polls.
Cruz described the race as dead even.Nationally, it is a different story. A new CNN/ORC poll of Republican voters has Trump doubling up on Cruz, 41 percent to 19 percent, with more than two-thirds of Republicans saying they believe the billionaire will seize the party's presidential nomination.
Senator Marco Rubio is a distant third, at eight percent, followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at six percent and former Florida governor Jeb Bush at five percent.
Cruz offered a remarkably candid assessment of Trump's surge, warning evangelical pastors in Iowa that if Trump manages to win there and then New Hampshire he could prove "unstoppable."
- Sanders at the White House -
It will be Cruz who takes center stage Thursday with six other Republicans in Des Moines without Trump, who will leave a glaring hole and the debate dynamics totally changed.
Cruz hit out at his rival, saying on the Mark Levin radio show that "Donald Trump is now afraid to appear on the debate stage."
He also challenged Trump to a one-on-one debate.Rival Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, said Trump's snub would be a mistake.
"I'm glad he's not coming, from my perspective. It's more time for the rest of us on the stage," Christie told Boston Herald Radio.
He also said Trump's thin-skinned reaction to criticism only "makes people call into question his judgment."
Trump's team took to cable television to taunt Fox, predicting that advertisers will be furious when Trump's absence from the main stage prompts a drop in viewership.
On the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders is running neck and neck with former secretary of state Clinton.
The independent senator from Vermont was in the spotlight Wednesday when he spent an hour in the Oval Office with President Barack Obama discussing foreign and domestic policy, as well as the campaign. AFP
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